What is atheism?

Atheism: An Affirmative View (1980) Emmett F. Fields

Atheism is the world of reality, it is reason, it is freedom, Atheism is human concern, and intellectual honesty to a degree that the religious mind cannot begin to understand. And yet it is more than this. Atheism is not an old religion, it is not a new and coming religion, in fact it is not, and never has been, a religion at all. The definition of Atheism is magnificent in its simplicity: Atheism is merely the bed-rock of sanity in a world of madness.
-- Emmett F. Fields

The first step, then, in understanding Atheism is to disregard all the lies and propaganda that religion has spread against it. Atheism is more than just the knowledge that gods do not exist, and that religion is either a mistake or a fraud. Atheism is an attitude, a frame of mind that looks at the world objectively, fearlessly, always trying to understand all things as a part of nature. It could be said that Atheism has a doctrine to question and a dogma to doubt. It is the human mind in its natural environment, nothing is too holy to be investigated, nor too sacred to be questioned. The Atheist Bible, it could be said, has but one word: "THINK." Atheism is the complete emancipation of the human mind from the chains and fears of superstition.
-- Emmett F. Fields

The study of history will further justify the theory that religion is a form of insanity. No sane and healthy minds could have waged the bloody religious wars and crusades where the conquered were slaughtered, men, women, and children, even infants, all were put to the sword simply because they were "infidels" or "heretics." The dungeons and torture chambers of the Holy Inquisition could not have been run by sane and healthy minds. And it had to be the insane mind, the religious mind, that would tie a woman to a stake, pile wood and fagots around her and burn her alive for the impossible crime of being a witch. No sane person could read of the horrors, rape and slaughter in a savage book and call that book "the word of God." And the Jesus myth, about a god who must become a man and be murdered before he can forgive mankind, is the most insane of all.
-- Emmett F. Fields